


The Job At Hand

by fluffernutter8



Series: Good Work [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Teachers, F/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Steggy Week 2016, fluff and Steve fighting everyone, mentions of Bruce Banner and Miriam Frye and Jack Thompson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-29
Updated: 2016-05-29
Packaged: 2018-07-10 21:54:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7009630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fluffernutter8/pseuds/fluffernutter8
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>If Peggy had known that Steve Rogers was going to cause so many problems, she might not have hired him.</i> Peggy is a high school principal. Steve is a high school teacher.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Job At Hand

If Peggy had known that Steve Rogers was going to cause so many problems, she might not have hired him.

She probably should have seen the _too good to be true_ stamped on his forehead, but she was distracted by the need to fill the position. He was qualified and willing to teach both studio art and Art History up to the AP level. He interviewed well, slightly nervous but competent and earnest. He had excellent references, although they all went something like “he’s a great teacher, he’s on top of things, the kids love him, but he’s had some friction with parents.” She was willing to overlook that, though; she already had to force herself not to fire Dr. Stark every single year after parent-teacher meetings with reminders that he was a significant part of her science department.

The first incident comes up before they’ve even had the back to school picnic. Mr. Rogers assigns a report, and one of the kids picks Rodin, and of course their parents walk in on pictures of The Kiss and not The Thinker, so Peggy has to deal with _that_ on a Monday morning when the coffee maker is broken.

“I’m really sorry about this, Principal Carter,” Mr. Rogers says, sitting forward in the chair across the desk from her, hands sincerely on knees.

“Don’t worry about it,” she says, tapping a nail on her empty mug, and gives him a smile. Something like this happens every year or so, usually with the library or the English curriculum. She writes an email to the parents about the school’s commitment to free speech and the importance of a well-rounded education, adding the official complaint protocols at the bottom, and starts preparing for the possibility of a school board hearing. She makes a note, too, to send out one of her regular reminders about the school’s sex education policy. Putting it in place had been one of the first things she had done when she became principal. She had taught the class herself while searching for qualified instructors. The parents know she advocates for an open, comprehensive view, from condoms to climax. There’s no reason for them to get worked up about some two hundred year old marble nudes.

She thinks that’s that.

* * *

There are smaller incidents along the way- the time when he’s asked to talk to the PTA and ends his speech with, “I’m not talking about the importance of funding the arts because that means funding me, I’m talking about it because the arts can open the world up, and some of these kids need their worlds opened,” and the day he tells the basketball coach that they have students from all walks of life and a pre-game prayer, especially one referencing Jesus, might make any one of them uncomfortable- but Peggy is still shocked in January when her secretary, Miriam, informs her with mighty disapproval that Mr. Rogers has punched a parent in the parking lot.

She conceals it, though, as he comes into her office and sits back in the chair.

“Well?” she asks, calm as the ocean.

“He deserved it.”

Peggy runs her school with expert hands. It’s been quite a while since she had to do any more than lift an eyebrow to break someone sitting sullenly on the other side of her desk. It’s been longer than that since someone answered back.

“I would say this was typically the part where you worked to keep your job, but this is a rather atypical situation.”

She waits for him, watching his tense, furious body. When he looks up, it is with clenched fists and ground out words. “He hits his son. That’s why.”

“How do you know that?”

“Bruce was a student at my last school. I’d see him in the halls. He’s a good kid. Smart, quiet. Only came in with a sling on once, but that was enough. He’s angry, and he can't always hide it. Doesn’t like getting close to people. I don’t need bruises to read the signs.”

Peggy tucks in her lips for a moment. She can’t entirely manage the stiff upper just now. “Did you report it?”

“Of course I reported it! Even if I wasn’t mandated I would have reported it. They said there wasn’t enough evidence, and Bruce denied it. Because I’m sure every scared kid is going to tell some stranger everything.” Steve looks at her. “I followed the system. The system failed. So when he transferred Bruce here, when he showed up, reminding all of us of what I failed to do, I took things into my own hands.”

One eyebrow neatly arched with a whimsy she doesn’t feel, she asks, “And how did that turn out?”

“Not well,” he admits with a twist to his mouth.

“Yes,” Peggy agrees. “Now perhaps I’ll take it into my hands.”

Dr. Banner very graciously accepts her apology, assuring her that he and Mr. Rogers have had misunderstandings in the past and he had _absolutely no idea_ that they would run into each other here at Bruce’s new school. He pats her hand and muses that teaching is a stressful profession and he doesn’t hold it against anyone.

Arrogance will work to her advantage.

She calls in a favor from Jack Thompson, a private eye who she doesn’t like very much, but who has just the right level of slimy respectability for the job, and is fairly capable when called to it.

Two weeks later she is in possession of some fairly damning photographic evidence, and some _very_ damning audio evidence along with written consent to be recorded (and Jack is going to be smug about pulling that off for months, as if Peggy hadn’t handed him an ego inflated with invincibility; she’d have done it herself if she had a little less on her plate). The week after that, Bruce goes to live with his aunt, Dr. Banner begins preparing for his court date, and Steve, eyes downcast, gifts Peggy with a drawing- simple charcoal on lovely, thick paper- of what she recognizes with some surprise as her own hands. One is in a fist, the other spread wide like a shield.

She buys a frame for it and hangs it in her office the next day.

* * *

Peggy gets into the routine of handling something new every week. Steve starts a unit about sexuality in art that she gets calls about practically before the first class is over. (“Kids aren’t stupid, Peggy. I’m not going to tell them that Georgia O’Keeffe just really liked her garden.”) He accompanies a group of students to an art competition and ends up telling one of the judges, some big name who’d been brought in specially, that his perspective was a little too European, and maybe he ought to go over to the Rubin or the Asia Society Museum and look around.

By February, Steve knows her order at Starbucks and where she keeps her industrial sized aspirin. In March he hands her a new bottle the day before her old one runs out, giving a sheepish wince when she glares.

The HR/PR Disaster, she dubs him one night to her friend Angie, the drama teacher. Angie listens to her rant for several minutes and then says, “Great teacher, though. The kids love him. And arts funding is up.” She takes a sip of her flagrantly blue cocktail and adds, “Cute as anything too. Looks like he’d be a good kisser.”

Peggy orders another drink and does not disagree.

* * *

Steve appears, in many respects, harmless. He wears glasses with plastic frames. His wardrobe seems to be made up half of sweaters: hipster cardigans, and snug pullovers, and plush grandfatherly knits that Peggy finds herself wanting to hug. He’ll talk about art or books for hours if you let him, drawing automatic little explanatory sketches and then looking adorably awkward about them.

But he also rides a motorbike to school, has far more than his share of muscles, something that the sweaters do little to hide, and has familiarized nearly the whole school community with the tone of voice that means he’s ready for a fight. There are even rumors of a tattoo. (Peggy can confirm, from two separate occasions. Once when he, after repeated reassurance that it wouldn’t make anyone uncomfortable, stripped down to a tank top at a faculty yoga event. The second time when she happened to be walking past his office as the door breezed open to reveal him changing after his turn in the dunk tank at the senior carnival. It’s a detailed, palm-sized star behind his right shoulder blade.)

Parents, as a rule, hate him.

Peggy’s on her way back from a three day principals conference when the messages start coming in. She knows just from the way the woman takes a breath before saying, “Principal Carter,” that the HR/PR Disaster has struck again.

Steve is in her office first thing the next morning. He is wearing his thickest, oldest sweater, and somehow manages to look miserable and hangdog while promptly handing over her coffee.

“I would never do this,” he says immediately as she sits down.

Peggy takes a sip. “Tell me what happened.”

“I was out at a bar,” he starts, exactly as she was hoping he would not. “And I saw a couple of girls from my class. I brought them home, but their parents might have gotten the wrong idea about what happened.”

“Why might they have?”

“They had some questions about how...sober I was at the time.”

“Was there a reason for them to be concerned?”

“Absolutely not.” He leans toward her, desperately straightforward. His fingers are stretched over his palms, touching the cuffs of his sweater.

“Can you confirm that with anyone?”

His gaze slides away. “I was with a friend,” he says, “but I- He- I’m not going to make him talk to anyone, Peg.”

Peggy stays very calm. She watches the redness of her nails against the whiteness of her cup. “Why?”

“He’s just back from his second tour,” Steve says bluntly. “He doesn’t need this in his life.”

“You are aware that you could lose your job over this, correct?”

He looks small before her, unhappy and resigned. “Yeah.”

She straightens. “You’re suspended until this is cleared up,” she says.

“Alright,” but he is very slow in getting to his feet.

“Go,” she says, waving a hand. “I’ll handle it.”

If the girls had even hinted at impropriety on Steve’s part, she would have believed them from the outset, not matter what she thought of Steve. But Amy and Selina both swear up and down that Mr. Rogers and his “cute friend” were both absolutely appropriate, and that their parents are upset over nothing.

Angie used to waitress at a bar near the one they had been to, and still knows the neighborhood. Peggy enlists her help. By the time she meets with Amy and Selina’s still-fuming parents, she has affidavits from the bartender, several patrons, the cabdriver, and a cop who was nearby.

They leave fuming anyway. Steve’s class applauds when he returns and he can’t start for five minutes because he’s blushing and telling them they’re being dramatic.

Peggy books herself two weeks in a cottage on a remote beach for the summer.

* * *

By the end of the year, the waiting lists for the art electives is longer than her arm, and Steve is voted most popular teacher. He complains to Peggy about it as they clean out one of the supply closets.

“I wouldn’t even still be here if you weren’t around to help me out of all the shit I get into,” he starts, breaking down a box without looking at it, his gaze on her. “And besides,” he says, turning away, “it’s probably rigged anyway. Not enough kids take my classes for that to have been a fair count. They should have picked Phillips, he’s been here forever-” but at that point she’s had enough of him.

“Shut up,” she says, fierce and polite, and swings him around and kisses him. He’s stunned still for only a moment.

He is, in fact, a frankly lovely kisser.

When she pulls away after a few moments, he stands there dazed, and then mumbles something that sounds like, “Seniority.”

“Oh good God,” Peggy says, and kisses him again. When she’s satisfied he’ll be quiet, she says, “Phillips is ancient and crotchety and hasn’t changed his textbook in twenty-five years. You, meanwhile, let them look at naked art and stand up to their parents and are bloody gorgeous. And even if you were useless, you’ll shut up and take it. I’ve earned this.”

“You really have,” he says, and kisses her this time, his hands smiling on her back. And then, long minutes later, “By the way. Who’s the HR/PR Disaster now?” His voice is glancingly smug, which cannot be allowed.

She takes his face in her hands. She’s lost all her lipstick, is half-sitting on a half-leaning Steve, and they’re probably the last people in the building when she says, “Maybe I’ll use this method to keep you out of trouble from now on.”

“Probably won’t work,” Steve says, on the verge of breathless laughter.

“Probably not,” Peggy agrees, but she’ll give it her best try, which is pretty damn good.

* * *

Steve comes to the beach. He manages to stay out of trouble.

Peggy doesn’t, exactly.


End file.
